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Paul C�zanne: Two Sketchbooks

Just as Puget was Cézanne's favorite sculptor, so the monumental Hercules Resting was his favorite statue in the Louvre, the one he drew more than any other work there: in addition to this copy, seventeen others are known, including three in Sketchbook II (see Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987-53-52a, 1987-53-56b, 1987-53-73b) and fourteen elsewhere (Chappuis, Adrien. The Drawings of Paul Cézanne. 2 vols. Greenwich, Conn., 1973, nos. 575-76, 578, 999-1005, 1058-60, 1196). Most of them show the statue not from the front, where Hercules' identifying club and lion skin are visible, but from the rear, where he appears an anonymous, athletic figure, like the Puget Atlases that Cézanne also drew (see Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987-53-13a). The powerfully muscled shoulders and back, their bulging curves further emphasized, are indeed what Cézanne concentrates on in this sketch, whose vigor matches that of its subject. Theodore Reff, from Paul Cézanne: Two Sketchbooks (1989), p. 88.